


The Gift of the Healers

by Athaia



Category: Earth's Children - Jean M. Auel
Genre: Gen, Graphic Description of Injuries, Medical Procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:28:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Athaia/pseuds/Athaia
Summary: Iza's magic came from protective spirits who acted through her, but a medicine woman was only an agent of the spirits; a magician interceded directly with them.At least that's what everyone believes, and nobody dares to ask a medicine woman about her business.
Comments: 39
Kudos: 75
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greenbirds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbirds/gifts).



> I loved all the books (well, save for the last one - haven't read that one yet) about Ayla and her adventures when I was a teenager... and yes, all the caveman sex, too LOL. Thank you for this trip down memory lane. Merry Yule!
> 
> Many thanks go to woggy for betaing.

Spring had finally beaten back winter; though the days had gotten longer, they weren't noticeably warmer yet. The icicles at the mouth of the cave had melted, but whenever a day with mild weather lured people outside, winter would return on its heels with howling storms that brought a mixture of rain and sleet, driving everyone back to their hearth fire. The seasons were battling it out like they did every year, with spring triumphant in the end, but as every year, their fight seemed to last forever.

The frequency and intensity of Iza’s cough had lessened, but it never went away completely. Ayla insisted that she stayed in the cave, so Iza busied herself with domestic work close to the hearth fire, where a tea of elecampane was now steeping at all times. She was secretly glad that Ayla took up the work she was actually supposed to do - she often felt tired, and the weakness in her arms and legs made simple things like collecting firewood seem insurmountable.

Ayla went out despite the weather; she was away for much of the day, and visibly tired when she came back, but she returned not only with fresh meat, but also with the first fresh greens of the year: leaves and bulbils of lesser celandine, chickweed, and young dandelion roots with their first tender leaves. Iza steamed the celandine, and arranged the chickweed and dandelion as raw side dishes. They were all starved for vitamins at the end of the long winter.

After the evening meals, Iza insisted on going through all the plants she had already taught her, adding new ones to the already immense library in the girl’s mind. Though she never mentioned it, she felt a new urgency to cram as much of her nearly infinite knowledge as possible into Ayla’s head.

Iza was again and again reminded of her foster daughter’s alienness as the girl struggled to remember every detail of every plant, its preparation, and application. Ayla never complained or slacked in her efforts, but Iza could see that it was hard for her. Try as she might, some details always slipped her mind - never the same details, either, which Iza found puzzling. It was as if there was a hole in Ayla’s mind through which her memories vanished, no matter how often Iza stuffed them back again. She couldn’t grasp how it happened - where did those memories go?

“I will go with you to the meadow today,” Iza said one morning as Ayla was getting ready to leave. “The weather is fine, and I wanted to show you how to identify loosestrife. It’s harder to recognize when it’s not yet in bloom.”

Ayla’s expression brightened. She loved their herbal excursions, and never tired of Iza’s lectures on the various properties of plants. Iza waved her away, though, when she reached for her collecting basket. “It’s too early yet to collect it - but you should be able to find it, and the other herbs we use, at any time.”

They slowly walked along the creek, Ayla pointing out the clumps of downy stalks already sprouting willow-shaped leaves, and reciting its many uses. “An infusion of the leaves helps against dysentery, and the flowers used as a mouthwash heal sores and ulcers. You can also make a poultice to put on sores elsewhere on the body, not just in the mouth.” She thought for a moment. “A poultice from the leaves also stops bleeding, whether from a wound, or when a woman’s totem is fighting too much. But in the case of a woman’s bleeding, you take it internally, as a tea.”

“That’s right,” Iza nodded. “It works even better as a styptic if you combine it with marigold, pond lily root, and bog myrtle bark.”

Ayla heaved a sigh. “I knew that - I just forgot. I only remembered it now, when you told me again.” She stopped, her brow creased with worry. “Iza, what if I never learn all of your herbs? You repeat them so often with me, and still I forget. I always forget something! How can I ever become a medicine woman without your memories?”

“Ayla, you don’t have to remember everything I know to be a good - a _very_ good medicine woman. You have other talents that make more than up for your lack of memories.” Iza put a soothing hand on her arm. “You have a different way of thinking than I, but it’s not a lesser way.”

They took up their slow walk again, and Ayla obediently rattled off what she remembered about every plant Iza pointed out to her, but the medicine woman could tell that she was distracted. Her mind was on something else.

She learned what it was when they settled down at a sunny spot under a willow tree, whose low-hanging branches shielded them from the wind, to have a second breakfast. Ayla slowly chewed on her strip of dried meat, staring at some undefined point across the river. Iza sipped her tea and waited.

“When you show Uba something,” Ayla finally gestured slowly, “I can see how she remembers - I can see it in her eyes. But when people get older, nobody has to remind them of things anymore. Do you still remember things that you hadn’t remembered before, then? How does that work?”

“We remind ourselves,” Iza replied. “When I come across a plant I don’t recognize, I describe its shape to myself - how the leaves are distributed around the stem, the shape of its flowers, its scent, where it grows - and that stirs up the memory. Or sometimes it’s when I start doing something; then the movement stirs a memory of how it is done in its entirety.”

“But what if you come across a plant that doesn’t stir a memory?” Ayla asked, her movements becoming faster and more energetic. “What if nobody had ever seen that plant before?”

“That is very rare, Ayla. The Clan has been walking this world for a very long time, and there isn’t much my ancestors haven’t come across at some point.”

But Ayla wasn’t that easily deterred from pursuing her train of thought. “But at _some_ point, the ancestors came across a plant they hadn’t seen before, right? How did they learn about its uses? How did they learn something new?”

The question made Iza uncomfortable - but once it had been asked, it stirred a memory in the back of her mind. An ancient memory, connected to a recent one she had been glad to suppress.

And she also understood the reasoning behind the question. If there was a way to learn the properties of a plant directly from the plant itself, not having the memories to rely on wouldn’t be so much of a disadvantage anymore.

Iza fleetingly wondered why Ayla put more faith in a method whose existence she only assumed than in her own, already manifest talent to come up with treatments by intuitively transferring her existing knowledge to new problems. Iza had pointed out her success with treating Brun’s scalding several times, but Ayla had always shrugged it off. She didn’t believe in her own gift; only the Clan way was legitimate in her eyes.

“Well, there is a way,” she said. Her gestures were even more hesitant than Ayla’s had been. “You know how to test plants for food.” Ayla nodded. There was an eager gleam in her eyes, a hope that tugged at Iza’s heartstrings. “You can also test a plant for its medicinal properties, but it takes more time, and more preparation,” Iza continued.

Ayla leaned forward, her meal forgotten. Iza sighed imperceptibly, and shifted to find a more comfortable position. She was still debating with herself how much she dared to reveal. “This is all knowledge that belongs to the medicine woman alone,” she gestured. “It is not shared with anyone except other medicine women. _Especially_ not with the men. They wouldn’t understand, and they wouldn’t approve.”

“I understand, Mother.”

Iza nodded, satisfied that the girl grasped the importance of secrecy. “When you come across a new plant that isn’t suitable for food, but has some effects on you - makes your mouth burn, for example, or makes you dizzy, or makes your eyes water - it could have some beneficial powers. Of course, it could also be poisonous. The most powerful herbs can cure as easily as they can kill.”

Ayla nodded. Iza often used datura to dull pain, or to put a patient to sleep. Prepared in a different way, it was used in ceremonies to alter the mind of the participants and make them more receptive to the blessings of the totems. But if the dosage was too high, or the infusion steeped for too long, or the plant was too old, or harvested from the wrong place, it could induce a delirium, burn up the body in an artificial fever, and even kill.

“This means you have to be even more careful when you start testing it,” Iza continued. “You want to use only the tiniest piece of it, so tiny that it can’t harm your body, but when you do that, the piece could be so tiny that you don’t notice its effect. You need to remove all distractions, so that you can sense what the plant is doing to you.”

Ayla watched with rapt attention as Iza explained how she was to prepare herself before testing a potential healing herb - there were special purification rituals to observe, and a special, very bland diet consisting of nothing but water and mashed grains without any seasonings. She was a bit dismayed when Iza told her that she’d have to keep to this diet for at least a full moon cycle. It seemed to be unbearably dull.

“Yes it is dull,” Iza said. “The plant you’re testing will be the only thing that stands out from the dullness. That is the point.”

New determination shone in Ayla’s eyes as she signed. “You’re right, Mother. I’m glad you told me, but I’ll still try to remember everything you teach me.”

“That’s wise,” Iza signed quickly. “You don’t have the time to test every plant for a full cycle - by then, your patients will either have recovered on their own, or died.”

“It’s still good to know how I could learn a plant’s effects if I need to.” Ayla’s shoulders finally relaxed, and she looked out across the water again, hugging her knees. She had grown again; Iza sometimes wondered if she would just continue to grow forever. She was already taller than any man in the clan.

She took another sip of her tea, but unlike her daughter, Iza found she couldn’t relax. She could stop here, keep the rest to herself. If Ayla already thought that fasting and eating gruel for a month was hard, would she even need to know about the... other things? She’d probably never put them to use, anyway.

 _That will be her decision, though,_ Iza thought. _I decided to train her as a medicine woman, I told her she’s of my line, and that I’d teach her everything I know._

_Everything._

“Ayla,” she said. “There is one more way to find out about a plant’s powers. As far as I know, only the medicine women of my line have accessed that memory. I learned about it from my mother when I was a girl, and now I’m giving the knowledge to you.” She paused; in her mind she looked back, to another clear morning long past, another place.

“This is something you mustn’t speak of to anyone,” she gestured absently, “not even to other medicine women at the Clan Gathering...”


	2. Chapter 2

“Iza.”

Creb’s voice was gruff, but his stance didn’t indicate annoyance. Still, it stopped her in her tracks; Iza dropped to the ground before her brother, silently requesting to speak.

He could’ve left her there, and go on his way as he had intended, shaking her off before she was allowed to rise on her own. But after a moment, she felt the gentle tap on her shoulder and looked up into his kind face. Although Creb tried to affect the same stern authority that the men of the clan wielded over their women, his gentle nature undermined his attempts, especially with his younger sister. Iza was the baby of their hearth, and Creb couldn’t - and probably didn’t want to - hide his affection for her.

Not that it mattered. Crippled from birth, so deformed that he should’ve by right been left to the elements to die, Creb would never be considered a man by anyone in the clan. He couldn’t hunt; he’d never manage to kill a big animal, a kill that would be celebrated in the ceremony that declared him a full-fledged member of the hunting party. He’d never have a mate, either; he couldn’t have provided for her, nor for the children born to their hearth fire. And even if that hadn’t been a consideration, no man would give one of their mate’s daughters to a deformed cripple who probably attracted bad luck like a piece of rotting meat attracted flies.

The other children, especially Vorg, never tired of reminding him of those facts, and Creb had found ways to avoid their company. He had begun to go on long walks into the woods surrounding their cave, with nothing but his walking stick and a stone knife to defend himself against the predators stalking the wilderness. His mother was worried, but there was nothing she could do; even as a cripple, Creb still outranked her by virtue of his gender.

Jiga had found a way around this problem, though. “Mother sent me to collect marigold flowers,” Iza signed. “But I’m afraid, Creb. I’m all alone in the woods, and meat eaters are hiding in the underbrush. Can’t you come with me?”

Creb hesitated. Clan people were incapable of lying - their language involved the whole body and made that impossible - but he sensed that Iza wasn’t telling the _whole_ truth. There was a sly undercurrent to her words, some hidden intention.

 _She wants to chaperone me,_ he realized. _Mother probably sent her after me. Does she think_ she _can protect_ me _when a meat eater attacks?_

He flushed with humiliation. “I cannot,” he gestured curtly. “I’ve set some traps I need to check. It’s almost noon - the meat eaters are all asleep now. If you are worried, make lots of noise, that will drive them away.” He abruptly turned around and hobbled away, acutely aware of his atrophied leg and the lopsided appearance it gave him.

He wasn’t sure if she followed him at a distance - he hadn’t outright forbidden her to follow him - but he soon tuned her out as his thoughts turned to the undeniable facts of his predicament that her badly concealed attempt at supervising him had brought to his attention again.

She probably hadn’t been sent to protect him just in case; she was a woman, she wouldn’t even know what to do, except to make a lot of noise to frighten the attacker away. While that worked with smaller predators, Creb doubted that it would impress a lynx or a wolf, not if they had already decided that he would make a tasty meal. And for a tiny moment, he thought that he, and everyone else, would be better off if that happened.

 _Why wasn’t I taken into the woods at birth?_ Creb wondered, not for the first time. _Why didn’t any of the other women do it for my mother, just this one time?_ It was as if evil spirits had conspired to condemn him to a life in this blighted body; Brun, younger than him, was out with the men hunting bison today. His little brother would kill one of the beasts, Creb knew, and come home a man, while he would never...

 _I could’ve gone back to the spirit world,_ Creb raged silently. _I could’ve returned in another body, a strong, healthy body_ , _one that can hunt, one that can mate-_

A squeal stopped him in his tracks. He hadn’t paid any attention to where he was going, and now found himself nose to nose with a shaggy brown face that seemed to be just as surprised as he was.

He had run into a bear. A young one, though already as big as him, crying out for its mother.

After a frozen moment, Creb inhaled softly and began to slowly edge sideways. If he could manage to slip into the dense foliage of the underbrush before the cub’s mother showed up-

The heavy musk of the bear enveloped him, but before he could react the world tilted sideways, a sudden blur of green and pain as something slammed into his face and ripped him from his feet. The left side of his face went numb. He tasted bitter moss and earth, then blood.

The huge shadow of the bear towered over him, and through the blood dimming his vision, it seemed to Creb that it was growing and growing until it filled the whole sky, until it became the sky, a wrathful darkness without stars. From far above the roaring growl of Bear swooped down to him, rattling his bones.

The sky fell on him, crushing him, and everything went dark.

* * *

It became harder and harder for Iza to keep up the ruse - even to herself - that she was out collecting marigold flowers when Creb went deeper into the woods. She wasn’t sure if he tried to shake her off, had set his traps in the forest, or was simply wandering lost in thought; it was something he did often, especially after the other boys had been harassing him. But whatever his reason, Iza felt more and more frightened as the canopy above her head began to shut out the sunlight, and the thickets to both sides of the path edged ever closer.

Usually, she would’ve taken a stick to pound the ground and the branches around her, and even used her voice to make as much noise as possible. The predators in the area had learned to associate human noises with flying rocks and spears (even if those weapons were hurled by the men, not the women), and gave them a wide berth; but Iza couldn’t alert Creb to her presence, and so she was distracted enough by listening to the varied sounds of the forest around her, and straining her eyes for traitorous movement in the shadows, that she lost sight of her brother again and again.

She froze when she suddenly caught a strong musky scent; her heart beat painfully in her chest as she listened for crunching twigs, a snort or a huff... anything to tell her where the big predator was lying in wait. She thought she knew the scent - had smelled it before, when she had cured a pelt - but terror was clouding her mind, and she couldn’t identify it. Something big...

Then she heard the whine of an animal. Iza didn’t know what it was - women didn’t take part in the men’s hunts - but it sounded young, and frightened. _It must be calling for its mother,_ Iza realized, and on the heels of that realization came a second one, shaking her limbs with fear. A mother protecting her cub was the most dangerous beast of all.

She saw movement ahead of her, but the sight was obscured by leaves and brush. A deep, rumbling growl, the rustle of shaking branches, and a yell-

_Creb!_

The growl rose and engulfed her, vibrating in her ears and her belly, and all she could do was to shrink into the underbrush and curl up into a ball as a giant shadow rose on the other side of the path, blocking out the sun. It hovered on its hindlegs for a moment, then fell on all fours again. She heard it sniffing and huffing, then soft grunting as it called its cub to heel. More rustling of leaves...

... then silence. After the danger to its young had been dealt with, the mother bear decided to retreat from the place of distress, rather than to finish off the human who had frightened her cub.

Iza forced her shaking limbs to move. Normally, she would’ve fled the site, but Creb was there... Creb was certainly injured and needed her help! She refused to think that he was dead. He couldn’t be.

She cautiously parted the branches and peeked out into the little clearing. The smell of bear musk still hung heavily in the air, mixed with the green scent of shredded leaves and trampled grass. And the smell of blood.

Creb lay under an aspen sapling, silent and unmoving. Iza forgot her fear and caution, and ran to his side. “Creb? Creb, are you awake?” Then she saw his wounds, and gasped. Creb didn’t react to her calling his name, and now she was glad that he didn’t.

Half of his face was missing.

Iza swallowed hard, forcing the bile down her throat again, and bent down to take a closer look at Creb’s injuries. The bear had batted at his head, almost scalping him; the left side of his face was shredded, and she couldn’t see his eye - everything was covered in blood, the bright red a shocking contrast to the muted browns and greens around him.

But the worse injury was farther down. Creb’s atrophied arm had been crushed under the weight of the bear’s paw when it had fallen down on all fours; white bone was poking through the skin in several places. He hadn’t been able to use the arm for much, but now Iza thought it was unlikely that he would be able to use it for anything at all... if he survived. Blood was gushing out in spurts, and that, Iza knew, was the most dangerous kind of bleeding. If she didn’t do something, he would die before her eyes.

He might still die from his other injuries, but not from this one, if she could help it. Iza quickly loosened the string that held her wrap together, and tied it around Creb’s upper arm to staunch the bleeding. She could feel the bones moving underneath her hand when she pulled the string tight over a piece of dead wood that she had added for pressure, and Creb moaned pitifully, but he didn’t wake up, and she silently thanked the spirits for that.

Iza sat back on her haunches, for a moment at loss what to do. She didn’t dare to leave Creb alone while she ran back to the cave for help - the smell of blood had to alert every predator in the vicinity. But she couldn’t move him by herself, and she didn’t have any herbs with her to start treating his wounds.

She could only call for help. But she didn’t know if anyone was even close by to hear her.

She took a deep breath-

... and almost swallowed her tongue when the leaves behind her rustled again. Iza whirled around, and stared into the face of her mother.

How had she known where they were? Had she been following them? But mother had a way of knowing... things that Iza didn’t fully understand. It was as if she could see through stone and wood, hear and smell people and animals that were too far away for everyone else to notice. Nobody ever mentioned this strange talent of their medicine woman, as if ignoring an ability that a woman wasn’t supposed to have would make it go away.

Jiga didn’t spare a glance for her stunned daughter; her eyes were on her oldest son. She didn’t look surprised; maybe she had expected things to end like this.

Maybe the spirits had finally decided to do what nobody had bothered to do all those years ago.


	3. Chapter 3

“Iza, clean the wounds on Creb’s head and chest.” Jiga’s gestures were quick and abrupt. “I need to take care of his arm first.”

After one look at Creb’s mangled body, Jiga had bent down to check the makeshift tourniquet around his arm, and then picked up her son and carried him back to the cave as if he weighed nothing. It was a sign of her alarm that she was able to hurry back to the camp without stopping even once - Clan women were used to carry heavy loads, but Creb was almost fully grown.

Iza had jogged after her, choked with dread. Creb hadn’t even whimpered when his mother had lifted him, although Iza had heard the bones in his arm scrape against each other.

Mangled by a bear! Iza wasn’t sure if her brother could survive such an attack - if anyone could.

The camp was deserted save for old Borg - the men had left to hunt bison and wouldn’t be back for another few days, and the few women that hadn’t gone with them to butcher and preserve the meat were out to collect roots, berries, and firewood.

Iza had stoked up their fire and brought water to a boil, then prepared a strong decoction of juniper needles that they would use to wash the wounds; in a second bowl, the rest of Jiga’s marigold flowers were steeping. Both plants were powerful allies against wound infection, but the marigold flowers would also aid with faster wound healing. Jiga looked over her preparations, nodded approvingly, and instructed her to prepare an infusion of datura, too.

When the juniper decoction was ready, Iza soaked a loosely-felted pad of mouflon wool in it, then began to carefully wipe away the drying blood on her brother’s chest. The bear’s claws had ripped through skin and muscle, but to her surprise the gashes weren’t that deep. The brunt of the bear’s hit had been taken by the boy’s head. Iza drew a deep breath, steeling herself for what she would be forced to see, and soaked another pad in the juniper brew.

From the corner of her eye she saw her mother loosen, then re-tighten the tourniquet. Leaving the string on for too long would kill the limb beneath it, Jiga had taught her. But Iza couldn’t see how the bloody mess below Creb’s elbow would be able to survive anyway. Creb had never been able to use that arm well; it had been thin and partially paralyzed from birth. He hadn’t even been able to properly sign with it.

Iza forced herself to ignore the crunching sounds as her mother tried to put the bone fragments into the right position. She leaned forward to wipe away the blood from Creb’s forehead. “Mother...”

Jiga made only a noncommittal sound, but looked up when Iza turned to face her. “The skin is loose, Mother; I can lift it up and see the bone underneath.” Iza tried hard to control her shaking hands. A medicine woman wouldn’t be fazed by gruelling sights like this.

“It will attach itself to the bone again,” Jiga signed, thoroughly unimpressed. “Just make sure you’ve cleaned it well before you reposition the skin flap.”

Iza swallowed. “Yes, Mother.”

She _knew_ she shouldn’t be fazed by the sight. Whenever the men went out to hunt big game they risked being gored, trampled, or torn up by their prey’s horns, hooves, or claws. Jiga had taken her daughter along on a big hunt for the first time during the previous summer, but luckily - or not, depending who one asked - nobody had been injured worse than a few scratches, so Iza hadn’t had an opportunity to learn field surgery firsthand.

She wished her first badly mangled patient hadn’t been her own brother.

She looked up when her mother sat back with a sudden motion. “This is no good,” Jiga signed when she caught her eye. ”The arm cannot be saved. It’s too damaged to grow back together.”

Iza sighed, but went back to wrapping Creb’s head with a soft leather strap to keep the repositioned skin flap in place. She didn’t want to think about the implications of her mother’s words.

She had placed a generous heap of powdered birch bark on the head wound; it would soak up the exudate and prevent infection. Satisfied with her work, she reached for one of the soaked muflon pads to clean up Creb’s face next.

The pad softened up the congealed mass, revealing four deep gashes that ran from his temple across the whole left side of the face, nearly carving off the left wing of Creb’s nose, and splitting his lip.

One of the gashes ran directly across his left eye.

Iza held her breath as she squeezed marigold tea from the pad and into the bloody mass filling up the eye socket. Surely, underneath all that red jelly there had to be the eyeball, right? She gingerly wiped across the mass-

... and jerked back with a yelp when it attached to the pad, leaving a gaping hole in its wake.

The bear had taken Creb’s eye.

“Iza, what is it?” Jiga craned her neck to see what had made her daughter react so strongly. She had been training her since she had been old enough to make an infusion, and wasn’t used to her being so jumpy. Even if this was her brother-

A low moan from Creb stilled her hands that had been forming some harsh scolding. Her son was regaining consciousness - too soon. There was still so much work to do.

She gestured impatiently, and Iza handed her the datura brew. After Creb had sunk back into a protective sleep, Jiga waved Iza over to her side.

“Leave the eye for now,” she said. “We need to clean the cavity and close the lids over it, but that has time for later. That wound is not so bad, and he still has another good eye to see with. But this here,” she nodded towards the bloody mass that had been an arm, “this won’t heal again. The bone is shattered in too many places.”

Iza nodded. “So what... what _can_ we do?”

“We cut it off.”

Amputations weren’t unheard of, although they were rare. Most men would rather die than lose a limb - the common opinion was that if a man couldn’t provide for his hearth anymore, he shouldn’t burden it by adding a useless mouth. But of course, not everyone shared that view - a man who could make flint tools, for example, was still a useful member of the tribe. And fingers and toes that froze in the harsh winters, and got blue and then black, were cut off without much ceremony.

But to cut off an arm or a leg was quite another matter. If it wasn’t done right, the patient could rapidly bleed to death, and if it wasn’t cut off high enough, the sickness in the stump would still spread until it reached the heart and killed the man. Jiga was determined not to let this happen.

While one could use a chipped flint knife to saw through bone, the result was never a clean cut, and thus was unfit to be used in an amputation. One always had to cut through the nearest joint, severing the softer cartilage that held the bone ends together. For all his bad luck that day, Creb was at least not going to lose his arm at the shoulder - Jiga wasn’t sure if that could’ve been done anyway. Limbs were commonly amputated at the knee or the elbow, and the elbow joint was where she would make her cut now, too.

She checked the tourniquet, instructed Iza to draw the skin below the string towards the tourniquet, and hefted her big stone chopper while she felt for the joint line.

Then she reached for her amulet and sent a silent plea to the spirits.

Creb had been deformed since birth, and it had been in fact his deformation - his huge skull - that had almost killed her while she had given birth to him. It had weakened her so much that she hadn’t been able to dispose of him within the first seven days of his life, as had been her duty both as his mother and as the medicine woman, but this ironic turn of events had convinced her that the spirits - who were said to appreciate a good joke - wanted him to live. The fact that he was still alive after being mauled by a cave bear seemed to confirm that impression.

_Well, if you want him to live, help him survive this here, too._

She opened her eyes and bore down on Creb’s arm.

* * *

Days passed, and it seemed to Iza that Creb was getting worse, not better. He was drowsy when awake, barely able to drink the medicine their mother gave him, but most of the time, he was sleeping - a sleep that was more akin to death than rest.

Iza and her mother had expertly taken care of his gruesome wounds. After Jiga had severed the crushed lower arm at the elbow, she had cauterized the wound, then applied a poultice of mashed plantain and yarrow. It had fallen to Iza to scrape the destroyed tissue out of Creb’s eye socket with a bone spoon, rinse the cavity with marigold infusion, and scratch the lids until fresh blood was oozing from the opening, before glueing them together with pine resin. The resin would prevent infection, and the lids would grow together as the wounds healed, covering the gaping hole where Creb’s eye had been. After she had overcome her initial shock - and after Creb had been led back to unconsciousness by her mother’s datura infusion - Iza had found the work rather fascinating. She didn’t exactly hope to be able to apply this newly remembered skill again, but she felt satisfied when she finally sat back and regarded her work.

Now, though, worry had replaced satisfaction. Creb felt cool to the touch, and his skin had taken on an ashen tone. His fever had broken the day before, but he didn’t seem to recover. His breaths were fast and shallow, just like his pulse.

Jiga hadn’t eaten anything since they had brought him back to the cave, and had ordered Iza to join her fast in order to placate the spirits. Mog-ur had come to their fire and made the holy signs over Creb’s body, imploring the spirits to help the boy to heal; Iza thought that his gestures had looked half-hearted, but kept her thoughts to herself. Many in the clan thought that it would be better if this crippled, useless boy would finally go with the spirits instead of clinging to this world and his deformed body.

On the fourth morning, Iza woke up to her mother putting things into her collecting basket that didn’t belong there - herb containers, a fire drill and tinder, and, most alarmingly, her ceremonial mug.

Iza sat up; the sun wasn’t yet up, and only hushed sounds from the other fires and the smell of smoke told her that she and her mother weren’t the only ones awake this early. It was almost too dark to see each other talk, so she simply reached out to touch Jiga’s arm in silent inquiry.

She felt her mother’s hand over her own; then the reassuring touch changed into a grip around her wrist as Jiga stood up and pulled her to her feet. Still silent, the medicine woman led her daughter away from the camp, and although Iza trembled with fear - this was the time of the predators, prowling the outskirts of the camp in the twilight - she didn’t resist Jiga’s authority.

The walked for a while, as the sky slowly turned from slate to pale blue. In the growing light, Iza saw that her mother was leading her towards the river. They continued down to the riverbank, then walked upstream until they reached a secluded spot where the embankment had broken down and formed a natural recess.

Jiga sent her to collect deadwood along the river, and proceeded to make a fire, which kept both their hands busy at the drill; by this time, Iza was bursting with curiosity, but she couldn’t miss her turn in twirling the stick, or they’d have to start all over again. Her thoughts were racing almost as fast as her hands, though: what were they doing out here all alone, making a fire? At this time of day? Would old Borg come looking for them? Would he punish them for leaving the camp without telling anyone where they were going? And what about Creb? Who was looking after him now? Why had her mother left him alone?

The tinder was beginning to smoke, and for long moments, Iza was focused on feeding the tiny flame. When the fire was finally burning high and devouring big chunks of wood, she saw that her mother pressed a herb package against her chest. Iza’s eyes widened as she saw the knot pattern on the package.

Her mother had brought datura to their secret campfire.

“Iza.”

It was the first word since they had left the cave, and it made Iza jump against her will. Her mother laid down the package with utmost care and lifted her hands to speak - then hesitated.

“Why are we here?” Iza finally asked. “Why did we leave Creb alone? He’s not well.”

“Creb is dying,” her mother replied bluntly. “The sickness of the bear is in his blood, and none of my herbs have been strong enough to fight it.”

Iza sat back, stunned. Jiga was the best medicine woman of the whole Clan, first among all medicine women. If anyone was able to save Creb’s life, it was her.

“Mog-ur says that the spirit of Cave Bear has chosen Creb to go with him to the spirit world and serve him there,” Jiga continued after a long silence. “But I have it in my heart that he might’ve chosen Creb, yes... but for something else.”

Although she knew it was foolish, Iza couldn’t help but throw a hasty glance over her shoulder. Nobody questioned Mog-ur’s statements about the spirit world. It certainly wasn’t a _woman’s_ place to think to know better what the spirits did or didn’t intend for someone, not even the medicine woman’s. Not even if she was the first among all medicine women-

“Maybe it’s wrong of me to doubt Mog-ur’s wisdom,” Jiga admitted. “But before I watch my son leave this world to follow Bear, I want to try one last thing. Something that hasn’t been done for a long time, and... I’m not sure would still be approved by the men.” She flicked a glance at her daughter, her eyes shining with wry irony. “Fortunately, nobody asks a medicine woman about her business.”

She held up the herb package. “You know what this is?”

“Datura,” Iza said promptly. “It’s good for treating bruises and broken bones, it puts people to sleep so we can do work that is too painful for them, and it’s also good against fever...”

“Yes, yes,” Jiga nodded, clearly amused. “And what else do we use it for?”

“For the ceremonies.” Iza found her hands were heavy all of a sudden, sluggish to move. “But we only do that when Mog-ur determines the right time, and calls the spirits for protection...” _So certainly we’re not going to do a ceremony_ now, _M_ _other, just you and me, all alone out here? Please?_

“You will be medicine woman after me, Iza, and although I hope you’ll never need to use what I’m going to teach you now, teach it I must,” Jiga said, ignoring Iza’s apprehension. “Of all the medicine women of the Clan, I might be the only one - the last one - who Remembers this at all. And the knowledge mustn’t be lost. Even if you don’t use it after today, even if you never need to, you must teach it to your daughter when the time comes. Promise me that.”

“I... I promise,” Iza signed. Her hands were cold.

”A medicine woman heals because she knows the right herbs,” Jiga said. Her eyes rested on the package now. “But she needs to know more than which leaves or roots to prepare. We, too, have allies, Iza, but they’re not the spirits that Mog-ur deals with. We have no business treading on the mog-urs’ ground, you can stop fretting.

“Our allies are the plant spirits, and it’s them who taught us how to heal. They are the true healers, Iza, never forget that. By now, we remember most of their uses, but in the beginning, we didn’t know any of their secrets; we had to test them like we still do with new plants for food. And yes, we can test plants for their healing powers, too, but some things will not be revealed that way. I don’t have the time to test a plant now, _Creb_ doesn’t have the time - and I wouldn’t even know which plants to test for their secret power.”

Jiga leaned forward, her eyes boring into Iza’s forcing her to hold her gaze. “We need to go to the spirits of the plants, and ask that one of them come forward to help us save Creb’s life.”

”... we?”

Jiga drew a deep breath. “No. Not we. You.” She held up a hand to stop Iza’s protest. “One of us needs to oversee the procedure, and bring the other one back if she travels too far - and that one can’t be you. You don’t have the experience. And this will be the only opportunity to teach you how it’s done, so it has to be you.”

Iza didn’t feel comfortable with her mother’s proposal - not because she distrusted her expertise, but because this looked like overstepping boundaries that had seemed as monumental and forbidding as the mountains and the sea. But it never occurred to her to refuse the medicine woman. “What do I need to do?”

Jiga nestled open the datura package. “For spirit travel, we use the leaves, but we don’t make a tea - we don’t want to dull the mind like we do when we set someone’s bones or the like. You take this much between your fingertips” - she demonstrated the amount to Iza - “and put it on a piece of glowing wood.”

At her sign, Iza raked out a piece of firewood that had already collected a coat of white ash over its red core. Jiga instructed her to sit so that her face was directly over the piece of coal, then sprinkled the dried datura leaves on it. “You need to breathe in the smoke,” she signed. “Breathe in as deeply as you can, and take as many breaths as needed until the leaves have been consumed by the fire.”

Iza leaned forward and inhaled the pungent smoke. After the first breath, it seemed to her as if she could breathe more deeply than before, as if her lungs were expanding and expanding without ever having to breathe out again. She felt slightly dizzy, but not bad.

Nothing happened. She looked in askance to her mother. “Now what?”

“Just be patient. Look around if something catches your eye.”

Iza leaned back and looked around. The eastern sky had turned a pale yellow; the sun would peek over the horizon any moment. Iza stared with rapt attention at the treeline, waiting for the brilliant flash of sunlight heralding the new day.

When it came, it was so bright that she had to squint. Pink and green, yellow and lavender, beams of color sprang from every treetop, touching and separating in ever-changing fractals. The patterns combined into an undulating movement, as if the woods and the river were taking deep breaths along with her.

The river. As if the last thought had shoved it to the forefront of her mind, Iza became intensely aware of the sound of running water. She felt hot; her mouth was dry. She got up and walked to the shore to drink a bit of water, and to dip her head under water to cool off. She didn’t mind that people were following her - her mother, and her grandmother, and some others that she was only vaguely aware of. They were probably thirsty as well.

A man was lying in the river. Iza stood at the shore, her thirst forgotten, and stared at him, and at the water rushing over his still form. He seemed to be sleeping, or dead. His hair and beard was white, so he had to be very old.

As that last thought floated up to her consciousness, the man’s body started to decay before her eyes. The water carried away his skin, then his flesh, until only the bones remained. Iza saw that his teeth were those of a wolf.

The last of his skin melted away on his face, and now she could see his eyes that had been hidden under the lids. They were glowing like coals in the water, red and gold like the sun, and the rushing water couldn’t carry them away. She was staring at the glowing pieces of wood of her own campfire; she had no memory of going back there.

The man was sitting in the fire, skin and hair restored, looking at her with those glowing eyes. The flames licked at his legs, his torso, but he didn’t seem bothered by them.

They looked at each other for long moments, before Iza finally thought of speaking to him. “Who are you? Can you help me to save Creb?”

The man held out his hand towards her. Iza reached out to grasp it.

*

When she woke up, she was lying in her own place at their hearth fire. She felt sluggish, as if waking up from a fever. She dimly remembered lying there for a long time, somehow floating between sleep and waking but unable to wake up properly.

But now she was awake, and even feeling normal in her head again. Iza sat up and looked around.

Nobody from the neighbouring fires even glanced at her, as was the polite thing to do, but Iza thought that people’s bodies were tense, and their movements a bit more abrupt than usual - not that she was supposed to look into other’s hearths herself. Iza turned her attention to the space within the confinements of her own hearth stones again when her mother handed her a mug of tea. She sniffed at it - mint, good for clearing one’s head.

“What happened?” Iza made tiny gestures in her lap, moving so that her back was to the rest of the cave. “How is Creb?” Her brother was lying on the other side of the fire, as still as before.

“He is better - this sleep is one of recovery, not of death,” Jiga signed back, clearly relieved. Then she used the same small, concealed gestures as Iza had. “Your medicine is very powerful.”

Iza remembered how the spirit of Wolfsbane had given her the secret to his healing; how she had instructed her mother to boil the root until the poison in it had been broken down; how to combine the infusion with preparations of licorice root and horseradish for a powerful medicine to battle the sickness in Creb’s blood.

But clearest of all she remembered the spirit’s glowing eyes. The eyes of the wolf.

She shuddered. “I don’t think this is something I want to do ever again.”

“I don’t think it will ever become necessary again,” her mother said. “We know almost all plants that grow here. But, Iza, this was an exception - now that it looks as if Creb will survive, Mog-ur says that the spirit of Cave Bear chose him to be our next mog-ur. Mog-ur has taken him on as his apprentice!”

Iza stared at her mother; then a wave of relief washed over her. Creb would become their next mog-ur! He would no longer be the useless cripple that the clan was forced to drag along. He would have status, even though he’d never be able to hunt. The clan would provide for him.

And Creb - Mog-ur - would provide for the Clan by negotiating with the spirits. After her own encounter with one of them, Iza understood how important and dangerous his calling was. She felt immensely grateful that women could never be mog-urs.

“The spirit of Cave Bear is the most powerful totem of all,” she gestured. “Creb will be a great mog-ur.”

“He will be the greatest of them all,” Jiga said with conviction.


	4. Chapter 4

Ayla kept vigil beside the man of the Others all night, hoping his fever would break. If the agrimony didn’t work, she had other medicines to try - Iza’s remedy for blood sickness among them - but she hoped she wouldn’t need it. If that medicine became necessary, it meant the man was already near death.

He couldn’t die! Not now, not when she had finally found him! Her totem wouldn’t have wanted her to find him, only to see him die.

She washed his face with cool water, but he didn’t react - he was tossing and turning, muttering in his sleep. Ayla studied his face, worrying her teeth over her lip, trying to decide if it was time for Iza’s remedy.

The thought brought back memories of the day when Iza had told her about how she had met the spirit of the plant that was the main ingredient of the mixture, and again Ayla wished the medicine woman had lived longer; so much knowledge had died with her.

 _I could learn what she couldn’t teach me from the plant spirits themselves,_ Ayla thought. _Iza said that’s how the medicine women of the Clan learned in the ancient times, too._ But there had never been an opportunity to go on a spirit journey while she had been living with the Clan, and no need to after she had been cast out - all her needs had been met by herbs she already knew how to prepare.

Besides, she had been alone; Iza had stressed the importance of a sitter, someone who’d take care that she didn’t step off a cliff or drown herself in a lake while her own spirit was away.

Ayla watched the sweaty face of the man; his fever finally seemed to be breaking. _I wonder if the Others have medicine women? They must have - that scab along his ribs means someone else has taken care of a recent injury. The bruise is still visible. Maybe his ribs were broken?_

_If the Others do have medicine women, do they also have mog-urs? Do they travel to the spirit world to talk to the spirits? And do the medicine women talk to the plant spirits? Would they sit with me and watch over me if I tried to journey to the plant spirits myself? Iza said they are our allies._

Maybe the man could answer her questions when he woke up. If he didn’t know, maybe he could take her to the Others who knew the answers. Ayla saw with relief that he had calmed down; he was drenched in sweat, which was a good sign. She gently rubbed down his whole body with water, then changed his beddings, and finally stretched out beside him, too tired to keep her eyes open. She would ask him later. He’d survive, and there would be time for all her questions later.

She dreamed of the cave with the strangely tilted rock again, but this time, Iza was standing in the entrance; other people were with her, hidden in the shadows of the cave, and although it was too dark to see them properly, Ayla knew they were medicine women - a long line of mothers and daughters, going all the way back into the darkness of the cave, back in time, back to the beginning of mankind.

Then Iza stepped aside, and now the cave was filled with men and women of the Others, and with people who looked neither like them nor like Clan people. One of them turned his head and looked directly at her with amber eyes, and Ayla realized with a jolt that this wasn’t a human at all. And now everyone was looking at her, silent, expectantly.

They were all waiting for her.


End file.
